Friday, August 28, 2009

Driving traffic to your web site! Part Two: Pay per Click

Once you have defined the keywords and listed them in the appropriate section of your web site, you can pay to drive more traffic to your site using pay per click. Think of the pay per click technique as a miniature auction going on in the background whenever someone types a term into the Google search box. I have used Google Adwords and set up a small three line advertisement, listing my Sales Team Development services. Google picked up the keywords that I listed on my site, and it allowed me to select the words that I want to link to my ad.

Take a look at this link: www.Adwords.google.com

Now the fun part!

When someone types the keywords I selected, the bidding takes place over the placement of my advertisement. I can control which keyword triggers the display of my ad, and a range of how much I want to bid to get the ad placed on the screen. Since I just turned the pay per click on last week, I am still looking at this as a test to see which keywords get interest, and which drive traffic to my site.

Testing Tools

Google Adwords includes a lot of analytic functions which allows you to view the quantity of hits that each keyword receives. You can then decide which words you want to trigger your advertisement and how much you are willing to bid to place them. I recommend that you start small and then increase your bid based on the number of clicks each of your keywords receives.

The Microsoft Office Live web site development tools offer a report function to track the traffic coming to your site. The tool allows you to look at the volume of traffic, the referring source, and the keywords that drove the person to your site. Wow!

Keep in mind that this is an ongoing active process:

Set up web site Enter keywords Set up Google Adwords Select keywords to trigger your advertisementMonitor results and web site traffic Adjust your keywords and pay per click amount Monitor traffic to see effect of changes made Add more pages and start all over

By monitoring the web traffic and its sources, you can adjust your keywords and advertisements and maximize the hits on your site, and grow you company.

I hope that this two part blog has helped you gain some insight into the tricks of the Wonderful World Wide Web!

1 comment:

Another great post! Since I work in the industrial and engineering internet marketing arena, which includes industrial website development, I respectfully want to offer a few points for consideration.

Keep in mind that keywords are how Google makes money. If you already have a solid understanding of the words that your target markets use to ask for your products and services, you will have a high probability that the keywords you have selected will work for the benefit of your company. However, most websites have poorly developed content. What Google doesn't want you to know is that content is the basis for whether or not a website comes up high in their organic rankings (non-paid). And when a website has great content and targeted keyword selection, well, the stars are indeed aligned!

Having a website with well-developed content is like fishing with a net. Keywords are like fishing with a pole. Well developed content doesn't limit you to selecting keywords and hoping they will work. Rather, your keywords are part of an aggregate (paragraph, bullets, etc.) of content describing your products and services. Of course, Google doesn't make money on how well you write your website content. And let's face it. Most folks leave content development up to the local website developer rather than actively engaging in the writing which is so critical to business development for their companies. Your website is not sprinkles on the cupcake. It's the front end of cash flow. It IS the cupcake!

There is no "silver bullet" for how to achieve a high search engine ranking for your website and how that, in turn, translates into business development for your company. However, most companies get into the keyword game. If you are trying to drive traffic to your website by Google adwords or keyword selection, make sure that your website is worth visiting. Otherwise you've just effectively shot yourself in the foot.